A much heralded French theater and opera director, Patrice Chereau has increasingly been directing feature films, finding his widest audience with "La Reine Margot/Queen Margot" (1993), adapted from the Dumas novel about the politically expedient marriage between the title character and Henry de Navarre in an attempt aimed at quelching the Protestant tide in France.

Chereau began directing for the stage in 1964 with a production of "L'Intervention" by Victor Hugo, then became the director of le Theatre de Sartrouville for three years, where he excelled with productions of Moliere classics. In